भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

that is the thing! They talk of the ‘interned’ only, because they know that it
is safer to do so and they dare not talk of the rest because they might be
losing their responsible positions in the eyes of their boss! Otherwise, when
the different provincial conferences have so clearly and so often made it
obvious that the majority of the provinces heartily wish to effect the release
of the political prisoners, one fails to understand why the Congres should
fail to do so. The business of the Congress is not to voice the sentiments of
the few that dominate its proceedings but of the many, who give it its
weight and support and in whose name ought to derive its right to be a
‘Congress’ at all. When so many provinical conferences have passed this
resolution and so often, when the leading papers and magazines have
incessantly pressed this point, when many of the leaders of the Congress
itself, when it was their turn to be rotting behind the prison walls had
expected and had thought they had a right to expect the sympathetic
mention of them by the people for whom they fought, above all or rather
least of all when the very Austrian people, not to mention the Irish, the
Boers &c. had been bold and honest and grateful enough to agitate for the
release of all their political prisoners and succeeded in getting it done, when
all these things are known and admitted, then I think that the Congress
could be and should be immediately forced to pass as bold and as
comprehensive a resolution as that of the Andhra or Maharashtra
Conferences this year. If some old hags tremble, let them absent themselves
from the sittings that adopt this resolution. Why should you all share in this
guilty silence because a handful of ‘Responsible’ are shaky about it?
Secondly, one or two precautions should be taken in case of any such
resolution or movements, if to be effective. Many papers write about
‘political prisoners’ but the language is so conveniently dubious that the
Government and even the people are quite likely to fail to understand what
is meant by that omnibus term, ‘political prisoners.’ Some times it means
interned, at others the detenue, then deported or the state prisoners, but
hardly it ever means those also who are convicted for offences of political
nature. I pointed out to you last year that Mr. Bonarlaw himself made a
distinction in Irish cases that the rebels were not guilty of ‘individual acts’!
Now that gentleman knew well that suffragists were all ‘convicted’ for
‘individual acts’ including arson! Yet they were released as soon as the war
broke out by the very Government Mr. Bonarlaw works in. Then I don’t see
why the word ‘convicted’ should be a bogey to the Indian ‘Responsibles’